


Defragmentation

by accessdenied



Series: The Fall, and What's Left [2]
Category: Remember Me (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drunken Flirting, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Families of Choice, Multi, Past Infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 12:04:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8978962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accessdenied/pseuds/accessdenied
Summary: Post-game. Drinking to remember. A set of three oneshots, might add more later.





	1. Whisky

**Author's Note:**

> gotta credit this fic (http://archiveofourown.org/works/2817263) for Bad Request's given name. Zachariah, meaning The Lord Remembers, hahaha i love suffering!

Tommy's apartment isn't built for three people. They manage out of necessity--the first night, Bad Request crashes for something like sixteen hours. The next night, it's Nilin who desperately needs some rest and recovery, and Tommy insists she stay close. After that, Bad Request sleeps on the sofa and Nilin sleeps on a pallet on the floor. (He tried to offer her the couch, but in retrospect maybe _it's not like I can remember anything more comfortable than a floor_ was the wrong argument.)

It's cramped but it feels strangely _right_ \-- after all that's happened, it's nice to wake up to solid confirmation that everyone is still alive. But as the days drag on, a sense of discomfort and restlessness starts to arise, and then one morning they find Nilin already dressed and pacing the living room.

"What's up?" Tommy says sleepily, starting a pot of coffee. "Some new company come to fill Memorize's place? Dïktat hell bent on takin' over the world with _fashion_?" He wiggles his fingers.

"I've imposed on your hospitality for too long," she says tensely.

"Bullshit. Aw, damn, we're out of creamer. Someone make a note to get more."

"I'm being serious, Tommy. I have... options. Ought to take one of them and let you get on with your life."

"Stop." The look he gives her over his shoulder is hard. "You wanna move out, that's fine by me. Don't try to act like you're being _noble_ about it, though-- I _like_ having you here. Would've tossed you out already if I didn't."

Nilin deflates a little. "At least let me pay you back somehow," she pleads. "I can't stand sitting here, just... leeching off of you."

"Oh, thank God," Bad Request says, relieved. "I've been thinking that, too, but I didn't know how to say it."

Tommy leaves the kitchen and places his hands on Nilin's shoulders, saying gently, "You're not leeching. The city might still want your head on a pike, but far as I'm concerned you've saved all our lives. What about _me_ paying _you_ back for that, huh?" He turns to Bad Request. "And you... Don't let anyone know, but I've gone fuckin' _soft_. I can't just dump you out on the street, what with all you've been through."

The two of them insisted, though, and so they pass a handful more days in forced normalcy, doing odd jobs around the Leaking Brain and pretending that nothing in the world has changed since what happened in the Conception Cube.

Until one night after closing, with Headache Tommy and Bad Request sitting in the lounge behind the curtain, when Nilin decides to just bite the bullet. She grabs her bottle and three glasses from under the bar, and sets them down on the lounge's low table, and pours everyone a little too much booze before sitting in the armchair.

Tommy's looking at her with one eyebrow raised. "What's the occasion, sweetheart?"

"Tommy," she says, clutching her glass so her hands won't shake. "Did you remember anything all of a sudden, that day that I took down Memorize?"

His expression darkens; he swirls the liquid in his glass before taking a generous sip. "Yeah. Not a whole lot, all things considered. I was never really one to go whining to the memory wipers, even before I fell in with the Errorists. But..." He sighs heavily. "Back when I first got started memory hunting, ages ago, I had a partner. Trusted him with my life. Then he got picked up by SABRE Force and ratted me out to save his own hide. That was my first stint in La Bastille, five years lost forever, nothing but a bunch of scars and a missing eye to show for it. I was bitter. Suspicious. Didn't want to carry that with me, especially not once I had a cause."

"What happened to him? Your partner."

Tommy shrugs. "Never saw him again. Or, if I did, I didn't notice. Don't particularly care about tracking him down now that I know his face again--what's done is done, and a lot of people do a lot of desperate things when they're up against the wall."

"I'm sorry," she says quietly, bumping her knee into his.

He shrugs again, and looks away, and when the silence gets to be too much he keeps talking. "...There was one other big thing. I lost both my parents in the gang wars that went on back before Paris was fully _Neo_ , and I knew that, but... I didn't know that I actually _saw_ it happen. Collateral damage. A bomb went off while the three of us were walking home. Dad was too close to the blast. Ma was hit in the head with debris. I got lucky." His mouth twists and he takes another drink. "I was twelve, maybe thirteen."

Nilin doesn't speak, she just crosses over to his couch and curls up into his side and wraps her arm around his waist. They stay like that for a long time, taking simple comfort in each other's presence, until Nilin pulls away and looks at the opposite couch.

Bad Request has been fidgeting miserably with his glass, not wanting to disturb them by leaving, but not wanting to intrude on what was so obviously a private moment either. He flinches when Nilin's attention settles on him.

"So, Bad," she says, trying not to sound too hopeful or too serious and failing on both counts, "what about you? Did you get anything back when I-- when I crashed the Memorize servers?"

(There's a story there, Tommy can tell by the way she stumbles over the words, but now isn't the time to press for details.)

Bad Request chews on his thumbnail for a little while before responding. "Nothing important. Most of high school. It all felt so... so _inescapable_ at the time. The teasing. The anxiety. But now it's just... petty, compared to everything." He pauses, eyes downcast. "Everyone called me Zachariah-- Zach. I guess that was my given name."

"Is that what you want us to call you?" Nilin asks gently.

He waves a hand. "Doesn't feel much more real than 'Bad Request'. And anything's better than Subject #84-217. Plus..." he says, looking up at her shyly, "I've got a lot of memories of _you_ calling me Bad. The only people I remember calling me Zach were people I hated."

"Alright, Bad Request." She gives him a soft smile. "If you ever change your mind, just tell us, yeah?"

Tommy reaches over and slaps him on the back. "Sorry that's all you got, kid."

"There's that little bit of Saint-Michel that Nilin gave back, the path to Kaori Sheridan's office," he points out. "And for a while I had a job waiting tables at a bistro in New Belleville--customers treated me like dirt, manager always stole at least half my tips, eventually I got dumped for a valet bot. And I also got back my first--" but then he snaps his mouth shut and takes a long drink and the tips of his ears go red.

Nilin looks faintly puzzled, but Tommy roars with laughter and it just makes him blush even deeper. "Now, who would ever wanna forget _that_?"

"It's _embarrassing_!" Bad Request covers his face with a hand and slides down on the couch and groans. "I didn't know what the _hell_ I was doing and I came in like three seconds, okay?"

"Ah. Right. I see." Nilin's visibly trying not to laugh, which is terrible, but also kind of nice in a weird way? The strangest things trigger the strangest emotions, with her. He's missing all the scaffolding needed to make sense of it. He likes her, and he owes her his life, and that's pretty much the extent of what he knows.

Tommy, meanwhile, has no problem laughing at his expense, and maybe the old him would've gotten upset or offended or something, but _this_ him just thinks it's nice to see something other than stress or fear or determination on both of their faces for once. He ducks his head, and grins, and admits, "It _is_ pretty funny, I guess." He gestures to Nilin with his glass before sipping from it. "Okay, okay, your turn. What sort of skeletons popped up in _your_ closet?"

He instantly regrets asking. So much for a lack of stress or fear or determination. He nearly chokes in his haste to backpedal. "Y-you don't have to answer if you don't wanna--"

"It's alright," Nilin says faintly, staring into the distance. "Only fair of me to tell, since I brought it up." She swallows. "When I ended it, I got back _everything_. For the first time in my life there are no holes, no shadows, no-- no _papered-over traumas_ done without my consent by someone who thought he was helping me. It's all here. Including everything I _did_ and _said_ and _thought_ when I had so little left of myself. I'm still... I'm still sorting through things. Trying to make sense of them. I don't know where to begin, honestly."

"There's no deadline, sweetheart. You don't have to figure everything out right now." Tommy finds one of her hands and she can feel his serious gaze even though she doesn't look up. "I need to ask, though. What happened to Edge?"

She knew this question was coming, but it still feels like a twist of the knife in her gut. "He died in the fight," she says, short and simple, and knocks back the rest of her drink.

"Ah, fuck," Tommy mutters under his breath. "Had the sinking feeling it was something like that."

Bad Request's hand jerks forward then returns to his glass, like he wants to comfort her but reconsiders at the last second. "I'm sorry. I know he was im-important to you..."

Nilin sets her empty glass down on the low table, tracing the rim with her fingertip. She wants to tell them everything. She wants to spare them the betrayal. In the end, all she says is, "He was my brother."

"Shit, really?" Tommy says. "He was always going around, calling everyone some kind of sibling, but with you... he meant it literally?"

She nods, and he folds her into a hug, a mirror of her earlier comfort. "I know how it feels to lose family. I wish there was something I could do for you."

Nilin gives them a small smile. "Well, I did also _gain_ some family."

"Oh?"

" _You_ , asshole." She tucks her face into his chest. "I trusted you when I had nothing else, but now I remember _why_. How we first met. All of it. I didn't know how much I missed our past until I got it back."

"Jesus. The mighty hunter's gone all sappy on me," Tommy scowls, his voice a little thick.

"You're included in this too, by the way," Nilin says, looking up at Bad Request. "Having both of you here... it helps. More than I can say."

And for the first time in quite a while, she just feels warm and calm and safe.


	2. who gives a shit so long as it's strong enough to kill a man

"David _cheated_ on me!" Olga screams in lieu of a greeting the next night, stomping into the Leaking Brain and slumping down on a barstool, furious and teary-eyed and already hammered. "With a whole _stack_ of sexbots in a Saint-Michel brothel, _and_ the Memorize accountant who handled our paychecks, _and_ some-- some _random chick_ from our apartment complex! And that's just the ones I found out about!!"

Nilin and Tommy each raise an eyebrow, and look at each other, and then Nilin continues polishing a glass while Tommy pours the bounty hunter a cupful of slum sauce.

"Surely you've not been drunk the _entire_ time since this revelation?" she says with mingled distaste and awe.

"Don't be stupid. Sometimes I was asleep." Olga throws a handful of random crumpled bills on the counter. "Leave the bottle, Cyclops. Maybe find a second one. This is gonna take a while."

"You know," Nilin offers, "when you've come to a bar to complain to the folks behind it, it isn't exactly polite to pregame so hard beforehand."

"Yeah!" Tommy says, jabbing a finger at her. "And I seem to recall something violent about you and I _not_ being drinking buddies, so what gives?"

"Trust me, this is _far_ from my first choice of place to drown my sorrows, but despite all our scientific advances alcohol still doesn't spontaneously appear in the houses of sad people," Olga says darkly. "Also I'm a fucking disgrace to polite society and this is the only bar in town that's halfway intact anymore, even if it _is_ now and forever a total dump."

She takes a swig from the glass in front of her and wrinkles her nose. "This," she declares, holding it up to the light, "is the absolute most disgusting thing that has ever passed my lips, and that _includes_ all the times I've been hit in the face with arterial spray." She drains the glass in one gulp and slams it down on the bar.

"Ooooookay, then!" Tommy winces, whisking the glass away and heading over to the fridge. "How about some nice, calm, _non-alcoholic_ soda for you now. Got a preference? Scratch that, I don't care, you're getting the cherry stuff 'cause I ordered too much on accident and everybody hates it."

Olga takes the can and drinks from it without seeming to notice the change in beverage. "He cheated on me," she repeats mutinously. "He cheated on me and then he convinced me to go with him to Memorize so we could forget it _together_. Like it was a-a-a _romantic bonding experience_ , the _bastard._ If he wasn't already dead I'd fucking kill him."

"Draw a weapon in my bar and you're paying everyone's tab 'fore I throw you out," Tommy says absentmindedly as he tops off another patron's glass, a rule he's had to recite more than once. More than once a week, to be honest.

Olga's fist is clenched on the counter and Nilin pats it sympathetically. "I know you're angry right now, but with time--"

"If you spout some bullshit about _time healing all wounds_ , I will _give_ you some wounds so you can test that theory _personally_ ," she growls.

"Draw a weapon in my bar--!!"

"Hypocrite. You've got a weapon _working_ in your bar," she sneers, gesturing to Nilin, and then her expression changes so quickly it'd be hilarious if Nilin wasn't so certain of what was coming next.

"No," she says flatly.

"Nilin," Olga says anyway, hushed and imploring. "You could do it. You've _already_ done it, only now I'm giving you permission. I'm _asking_."

"I don't do that anymore." She puts away the clean glass and reaches for another, and Olga's hand darts across the counter to seize her right wrist in an iron grip.

"You still wear your hunt glove," she accuses.

"Habit and self-defense. Let go of me before I make you."

"Weak excuses. You want me to beg? Fine. _Please_. Steal it. Remix me. I don't care which. I've got so little left to remember him by, I don't want this poisoning everything."

Nilin's voice is hard. "We've all got things we don't want. That's life, as it ought to be lived."

"There _must_ be something I can give you." Olga's getting desperate, speaking around a lump in her throat. "Money-- no, they froze my accounts when I started blowing up shit. Information. Favors. I have connections, could get your criminal records wiped--"

Nilin makes a concentrated effort to be gentle. "I don't _want_ my records wiped. You have no idea how much I've done to ensure the past stays permanent. We're meant to deal with things, not put them on a shelf and let them rot."

A few tears roll down her cheeks, and she tightens her grip on Nilin's wrist. "I don't know if I can," she whispers.

"Don't know if you can?" Nilin slides free so she's clutching Olga's hand with both of her own. "You're Olga fucking Sedova, the most notorious bounty hunter in Europe! The bane of literally everyone I know! I'm fairly certain you can do _anything_."

She doesn't pull away from the affectionate contact, to which Nilin credits the absolute _deluge_ of alcohol apparently in her veins. "I don't know _how_ ," she nearly sobs.

"Easy," Nilin replies. "Get angry again. Punch a wall. Pick a fight-- not in the bar, we _know_." She rolls her eyes, and Tommy shuts his mouth. "Drink too much and cry and curse his name and go through desperate, ill-advised revenge hookups."

Olga's gaze flicks down to their hands, then up to Nilin with her eyebrows slightly raised.

Nilin's face flushes a little and she steps back. "I didn't mean-- That's a _really_ bad idea."

"You've just told me bad ideas are the cure," she challenges, contemplating Nilin's lips.

She takes another step back and stares firmly over Olga's shoulder. "Think about it again once you're sober, yeah? Why don't we get you back home before you fall off a catwalk and die. Christ, you didn't fly here in this state, did you?"

Olga staggers off the barstool, flipping her off. "Autopilot, bitch. I'm not an idiot."

"Back to the ship with you, then." Nilin ducks around the bar and takes Olga's elbow, gently herding her in the direction of Slum 404's lone landing pad.

When she returns a few minutes later, Tommy is wiping down the bar with a perfectly serene expression on his face. "Not a _word_ out of you," she snarls.

"About what?" he asks, the very picture of innocence. Then he taps the corner of his mouth and smirks. "You got a little purple right here, though."


	3. Wine

It's not surprising that Charles is the one who's falling apart.

It's a little surprising that Scylla doesn't leave him behind.

Oh, it's not like she's suddenly unearthed some wealth of nurturing. She's as cold and severe as ever. It's just that loyalty doesn't seem like such a sunk cost, anymore, which is why she's moved back into the Conception Cube with him instead of staying in the apartments she used to keep in the city.

Nilin visits her mother every Monday. It is, officially, _not_ a business meeting. It is, officially, _not_ a threat. It is, officially, _not_ a way for her to ensure the Cartier-Wells are staying in line.

Officially, it doesn't happen at all.

Unofficially, the two of them make small talk in Mnemopolis once a week over an exceptionally polite glass of wine. _Actual_ wine, made out of grapes and everything. Nilin had assumed it was extinct--all the crops in this area failed more than fifty years ago. Every time she thinks she's grasped how rich her parents _really_ are, they turn around and casually do something like _this_.

(It tastes kind of terrible, but not drinking it would be rude.)

"So, how is--" Nilin stumbles. _Papa_ is too familiar, _my father_ too formal, _Charles_ too odd. She decides on vagueness. "--he doing?"

"As well as can be expected," Scylla says heavily. "I've had to talk him down from reinstating H3O twice already. Oh, you should've heard the arguments. 'We'll get it right this time, Scylla, we just have to try...!' As though we haven't done _enough_ damage with our noble intentions. Thank God he formally signed the company over to me years ago, and that the server access is still dual-authentication. I confiscated his--I believe they've come to be called 'hunt gloves'?--as well. Burned the damned thing. Nothing's stopping him from making another, I suppose, but at least I've removed the immediate temptation."

"That seems... a little much."

Scylla gives her a sharp look. "You'd rather I let the mad scientist run rampant?"

"No, not _your_ actions. His," Nilin says quickly. "I thought... That day, he seemed to understand what had gone wrong. I thought that I got through to him."

"Charles..." Scylla looks away, towards the door to the sitting room, and sighs. "You wouldn't know it from looking, but he very nearly rivals _me_ in stubbornness. I love the man, but all he does is dream, and all he dreams about is _himself_. How _he_ can change the world. How _he_ can fix it all. What _he_ can do to be deified as a genius... Someone has to do the dirty work of living in the real world."

"And that someone would be you, naturally?"

Scylla turns back to regard her coolly. "You know everything that we've done, now. Is this a question or an _accusation_?"

"I've changed from the girl you remember." Nilin smiles, and lets it be a little cruel. "Having your entire selfhood wrenched out of your head and returned in bits and pieces tends to do that to a person, I would think."

There's a long pause before Scylla laughs and leans back, swirling the wine in her glass. "I _am_ trying to be civil, my dear. I just haven't had much practice at it."

"Yeah, well, your execution needs work."

"I know," she murmurs, taking a sip. "I know. You're right, by the way-- I leapt at the chance to be the human face to Charles's vision. I suppose I'm no better than he. So wrapped up in what we can do to push forward, we lose sight of where we'll end up." The look she gives Nilin over the rim of her glass is unreadable. "Thank you for shattering the illusion."

Nilin covers her surprise with a drink. Of all the possible outcomes of these conversations, _thanks_ was fairly near the bottom of the list. There's a silence that threatens to turn awkward, but honestly this entire situation is awkward, and so she might as well shatter the rest of the illusion.

After all, Nilin thinks, if someone who tried to kill her for money deserves the truth, so does her own mother.

"I remixed you," she says quietly, rolling the stem of the glass between her fingers.

"I know, dear," Scylla smiles, with about as much warmth as she's capable of. She laughs at the shock on Nilin's face. "Do you take me for a fool? It's been my biggest fear ever since I saw how Charles changed you when you were just a girl, that he would decide to do the same to me _for my own good_ , or some other excuse. It only makes sense that you would inherit your father's talent."

"Why--" Nilin stammers. "If you knew, why did you let me go? Why did you help me escape? Why do you invite me back here each week--"

"Desperate times call for desperate measures." She places her glass on the end table and folds her hands neatly in her lap. "I was enslaving the sick and calling myself a _savior_. Delusional of me. Worse, shortsighted. Reconversion was only ever a stopgap-- so long as Memorize continued to offer its various services, more Leapers would continue to arise. But I thought... I thought the company had too much momentum to change direction. And, _oh_ , what would the _shareholders_ think!" Scylla rolls her eyes.

Nilin watches her mother and chooses her words carefully. "There _is_ one thing I don't understand about the remix... I changed your memory of the crash because that was the first thing I landed on, that was what stood out strongest in your history. But why would something that happened twenty years ago change how you feel _today_?"

There's a long pause, and then she says in a deceptively light tone, "Do you know what the name 'Scylla' means, dear?" Nilin shakes her head. "It was a legendary creature in ancient Greece. One of a pair of monstrous women, snatching innocent sailors from their ships and devouring them alive. My father started calling me that when I was fourteen. I made it my legal name out of spite." She smiles and it doesn't reach her eyes in the slightest. "I've done a lot of things out of spite."

Scylla drops her gaze to her hands. "I don't remember what I actually said to you in that car anymore," she says slowly, "but I remember the fear in your eyes, and I remember the lengths to which Charles went so that you would forget, and I know myself. It must've been terrible. I made _one_ mistake and thought it proved everyone right-- that I really was monstrous, that I really was unfit to be a mother. But I was only unfit because I chose to stop _trying_."

She glances up at Nilin, and then back away. "You removed that mistake and it threw twenty years of choices into chaos; there was no more foundation. And it made me realize that if I had chosen over and over again to be spiteful to my employees, hardhearted to the suffering, superior to an entire city I'd made dependent on me, then I could just as easily choose something different. 'Humanity Evolved' was Antoine's--your grandfather's--motto. Why not try a little humanity, see if that works better?"

"I see," Nilin murmurs.

Scylla picks up her glass and takes a sip, saying frankly, "Speaking of humanity and trying things, I don't harbor any illusions about the three of us suddenly becoming a perfect happy family. There's too much bad blood. No matter what your father says, the past cannot _actually_ be changed, only our perception of it. But, I would like... I would like to try having a real relationship with you, if that's possible. You _are_ my only child. You've grown so much, _done_ so much, and I'm proud of you."

Nilin swallows, but Scylla continues speaking before she can respond. "I understand all the reasons you may have for not wanting that, though. So, if you'd rather keep this professional, where we sit and chat and both pretend you're not here to make sure neither of your parents have gone _evil_ again... that's also fine."

Scylla smiles, thin and sharp.

Nilin really thought she was being subtle enough.

She sits back in her chair and relaxes her posture into something much less formal, much more herself. "I don't know how I feel about that, to be honest." She tilts her head at the woman across from her, trying to make her as transparent as Scylla can make everybody else with no tools or tricks. "So much of my past is still out of order, still needs to be examined under the lens of all I've recently come to know. On top of what little I'm doing to help the city reinvent itself. So, let's shelve this topic for now."

"A sensible conclusion." They both stand, and Scylla catches Nilin's wrist when she turns to leave. When Nilin glares up at her, ready to wrench herself away, she's no longer the head of the most powerful multinational on the planet--she's just a woman, uncertain and desperate in her own way, and all her protests die on her tongue. "I won't ask what you're doing," she says in a low, pleading voice, "and I wouldn't dream of asking you to stop. But, please, be _careful_. For your own sake, if not for mine and Charles's."

She slips out of her mother's grasp. "I am," she says softly.


End file.
